And now we find ourselves in 2026. It’s a bit surreal on several counts, but I hope you all have been enjoying your:
Remember, the Twelve Days of Christmas go from December 25 to January 5, so take this winter solstice time to chill and relax — Chillaxmas.
Stay chill, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
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I started Wednesday Wow posts back in 2012. Three posts in one month (Sept 12, Sept 19, and Sept 26). Then nothing for two years. More like nothing for six years as there was only one post in that time (a tribute to John Venn and his famous diagrams).
The 2018 Kīlauea volcano eruption on Hawai’i really wowed me. Since then, a trickle of Wow! posts — 32 in 14 years. The number of years invested in this blog is becoming its own small wow (a topic for next month’s annual roundup).
The Wow! today is making it to 2026. And to 70+ revolutions around the local star — the party for that was beyond awesome.
My most important annual event, the Winter Solstice, has passed (at 15:03 UTC; 9:03 AM CST) and the light shall return!
It’ll take a while to notice but get ready to party!
Stay warm, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
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Winter (again), and in a pretty big way. As in shovel, shovel, shovel, brrrr…
It seems pretty clear at this point we’ll have snow for Christmas.
A few posts ago I wrote that for “two weeks I’ve indulged in intense 12+ hour days on a self-education project in Python and its Tk module.” The end result of the binge is seven new apps (so far; more to come) and a good starting grasp of how to make some fairly decent windowing apps in Microsoft Windows using out-of-the-box Python.
More concretely, my “tk” project folder has 14 Python files with over 9,000 lines of code (367,000+ characters). That’s what remains. I didn’t save the many false starts, tests, and trials. Suffice to say I probably wrote close to twice as much code.
This post is “Dear Diary” entry for documenting the progress, the fun, and the frustration. It may not be terribly interesting for anyone else, but I learned a lot and (ultimately) really enjoyed the experience. And it’s nice to find out that this ancient dog can still learn new tricks.
Winter, that is.
Last evening, we had rain that turned to snow after midnight. The result, of course, it a bit of an icy mess.
Every once in a while, it’s time to update my 960 Months image:
See Only 960 for an explanation.
Stay ticking, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.
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As we slide into leafy glory of Midwestern fall — the Autumnal Equinox, my least favorite day of the year lurking dead ahead — thoughts turn nostalgic for the dying summer and by extension all those long-dead summers that tail behind.
The older we get, the longer our 4D tail back through the years to our first. As different as we become over time, there is a continuity that defines us.
This post, as did the last one, has notes from 40+ years ago — still a goodly fraction more than half my span (thus far), so these are definitely from my callow youth.
It’s hard for me to believe 2025 is already sliding into fall. The leaves are starting to turn — the trees are ending their annual breath. Some geese are heading south — unmistakable signs that winter is coming. There’s been a chill in the air.
Another orbit around our star, another year torn from the calendar. For an old farts like me, it pulls my thoughts backwards through all those discarded calendar pages.
The usual stream of the new pushed aside a pair of ancient note piles (mid-sized spiral-bound notebooks, actually) that date back to college and high school. It’s time to let the new abide a bit and dig up these time capsules (so I can at long last throw away those agèd notebooks).
The last post, Smoke Alarm Saga, concerned the frustrations with my smoke alarms and the service vendor who installed them — a company whose failings apparently put them out of business.
It wasn’t just the service; the product was bad. Three of the four smoke alarms they installed failed after seven months. In the midst of that frustration — after I’d removed the two my ladder reached but was still plagued by the one 13 feet up — I had a rather strange morning.
One that seemed to fit right in with everything else going on…
Posts pertaining to programming!
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